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Monday February 4, 2013 6:24 AM

LOVELAND, Ohio (AP) — This isn’t how Loveland got its name.

Owners of neighboring homes in the northern Cincinnati suburb have been at odds for a decade.
Their disputes over boundaries, threats, damage to property and other strife have made them
familiar names among police, city officials and local court staff members.

The neighbors with abutting backyards are headed to a new showdown in court over Chris Bucher’s
allegation that neighbor Judith West purposely killed his 100-year-old silver maple tree. She
denies it.

The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that West says she has dozens of videotapes of Bucher on
her property, and she positioned bright floodlights in his direction to catch him. Bucher,
meanwhile, built an 8-foot-tall fence painted a bright pink.

“He’s very vindictive,” West said of Bucher. “The word
vindictive is not strong enough. I need to find a meaner word.”

“It’s not a neighbor feud,” Bucher said. “I moved in with good intentions and got abused by this
wacky lady.”

He was convicted in 2007 in mayor’s court of aggravated menacing after he picked up what West’s
boyfriend thought was a rifle,
The Enquirer reported. It turned out to be a pickax. She has also won stalking orders
against him.

Bucher, 54, now lives near Dayton and rents out his Loveland house. He would like to sell the
home he bought in 2003.

West, 57, has lived there since 1990 and says she’s not moving.

She has said Bucher kept her up late partying all night with his buddies, urinated in her yard,
sprayed her with a water hose, called her bad names, painted a vile name in large letters on a shed
near her property and poured motor oil on her property.

“He constantly is taunting me,” West said.

“She’s just adversarial and always has been, and seems to entertain herself with this kind of
behavior,” Bucher said.

Their neighbors aren’t amused.

“It’s just been horrible,” said Paula Reeves, a nearby resident. “We’re all sick of it. We don’t
want to talk about it constantly.”

City Manager Tom Carroll said the feud has been a drain on the city, and police are frustrated
by repeated visits to the homes.

“Two people have the right to hate each other,” Carroll said.

They have a date in court in March. Bucher says she killed a tree he values at $10,000. He said
she severely pruned the tree’s overhang into her backyard, drilled holes into roots extending into
her yard, and used weedkiller to finish it off.

“I didn’t poison his tree,” West said, adding that she had ruined three lawn mowers on its
exposed roots.

The two agree that their conflicts began soon after Bucher moved in, over the tossing of leaves
and other yard debris into the other’s yard. They disagree on who was the culprit, though.